AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 281, 25 November 1921, Page 7

AMONG OURSELVES.

A .WEEKLY REVIEW. (BY CONSTANCE CLYDE.) MENTAL WORKERS, WAKE UP. A plea that the middle classes defend themselves by giTding on the breastplate of economy has been made appropriately enough in Scotland-Middle-class' families are to form a va»i organisation pledged to take pride in corduroy children and one-hatted wives. In the claea that calls itself the middle classes, however, \(I prefer the term mental workers) salaries, owing to our disorganisation, would sympathetically rush downwards. A* regards raising or safety guarding their positions by something in the nature of trade unions, the reformers contend that it would be impo-eible for the mental workers to unih: as the manual toilers are doing, because they have no common basis. But why should not ~the various occupations unite first among themselves, /and then consider affiliation ? The trouble is ithat the mental workers, to inspire them, have no history, and, worse still, no tradition. When I was young I felt the pathos of the four cities mourning Homer dead, "Through which the living Homer begged his bread." Now. looking back, I consider that Homer (if he eveT existed) should have organised all the other local Homers and insisted on getting a good deal more than bread, and without any: backdoor business either. Keats, instead of giving himself a broken heart might have given his critica a broken head. Chatterton would have been more admirable with the blundjerbus of hie period than with the poison bottle, and when Southey gave Charlotte Bronte his celebrated advice, to sweep floors and leave novel writing to men, her reply should have convinced the Lake poet that the race of Amazons was not extinct. Had the mental workers of all times engaged in such etunts while the proletariat were breaking down the Bastille or indulging in Chartist riote, they would to-day have behind them a. meaning and a name, and would now have been able, like the proletariat, to get their own way by downing tools till an agitated populace implored them to take them up again. The mental workers, however, have not the ability or the force to combine in any euch way! In fact, they are not the mental claeees at all! The whaTfies and miners and navvies are the mental classes. They have shown courage, initiative and skill, and if it were not that they are against us we should feel very much like the English squire who, having gone to sleep when "Paradise Lost" was recited, woke up when the orator was giving Satan's j ma-gnificent defiance. "Three cheers for him," shouted the worthy magnate, "I don't know who he is, but I hope he wins."

It might be said that the question of mental workers is not a woman's question fa matter is called not a woman's question if it concerns men as well as ivomcn). As a matter of fact this is very much a woman's question. Men are against any organisation of mental workers because they feel, though they do not always say, that it takes awa/ from the gentleraenliness and refinement of th.-ir position. Let women note tint the "gentlemanliness of a profession never helps them. Jfo profession, perhaps, is more removed from the sordidness of trades unionism than sculpture. Woman sculptors in Rnsrland, however, informed mc that owing to their not beincr able to join certain clubs they could not gain information in time regarding certain offers made for work. Let women there or here leave men to then- gentility and early Victorianwm, while we spend a few years sitting at! the feet of Wharfie Bill"! OPEN AIR ESTABLISHMENTS.

Open air schools may be a fad Or a reform. Climate decides. Milan has one such establishment that board's 1700 children. It is built on an old racecourse, and is furnished with bathing places, football fields, skating rinks and cinematograph shows. The buildings in Swiss chalet style make a pretty sight among the trees, and teachers and pupils look radiantly 'happy. Another such place has been founded by an Italian touring club for war orphans. Germany also ii expressing the same idea. A former military camp in Frankfurt is now a summer school for children, some of them physically defective. Here also are the usual means of physical and mental enjoyment. Folk songs and old dances are among the recreations. In each pavilion the inmates represent a family, and discipline is left largely to the children themselves (which may not be too pleasant for the individual child considering the excessive punishment th« average child will decree for another). Another' open air home- of a diff.-reut nature is the Can ning canxp at the English Minister of Agriculture's experimental station at Chipping Camden, a village in the Cotswolds. Here certain diplomaed teachers

of domestic subjects have been taking a "refresher" course in fruit and vegetable preservation. Part of the time was spent in practical bottling and canning, some in the science laboratory, while there were visits to gardens and orchard-3 to study conditions for ettowing fruit. Many English women have already taken to market gardening. It is thought that canning and preserving might go hand in hand with these, the quick motor transport of modern days being an additional facility. "Tf there were seventy applications ih:-= year there will be seven hundred next," sai<l one of the students.

WOMEN .TTTKORS DISMISSED. Tn England lately four women jurors were requested by the iudsre to withdraw before tbe trial of a sordid caee in which a girl had been etr.p'.oved as a decoy h*> hiaoWnn i'ers. the "Woman's Leader" points out, "it i- a a commonplace of Parliament to refuse { to sanction nf protection for : jrirls and women become tiiov are alleged to facilitate blackmail." Women, men consider, are fsT too oblivious as Ito th* real denser of blackirciK Therefore, bere wpe an onportiinity. 'towever unpleasant the details might he, of making them realise this as a danger that is almost special to tile one *ex. The same Daper mention-? another case in which the common sergeant ordered that the women jurors should Ye discharged and replaced by men. It was a case wherein a man was being: tried for grave l'Viel on a married woman's character. "The official d'Vl not arive a reason for the dismissal, but oracularly remarked that 'certain matter* made the emiree desirable.'"' Tf they are going to turn off women in thie wav it will scarcely be wo r th while calling them up at all. Perhaps we shall see women re'e?atfid tn nothing more emotional than the tlieft of milk cane or the disputed ownership of a cat.

MBS. M.P. "Twenty reasons why Mrs. Wintrrnsham mustn't get into Parliament." So ran the rather t?tartlin» statement concern ins* the second woman M.P., when standing for Louth. However, the "objections" were by her friends, and consisted of the twenty public bodies on which slie did good work, and which naturally did not want to let her go. Mrs. Wintrin.g'baih'-3 election is now an old story, but it ie pleasant to dwell upon the fact that it was the women who put her in. Many of these, are village and market women. "Lady [Astor's got a sharp tongue. I like the way she goes for Sir Frederick Banbury. So Til vote for another woman." "It's a sixteen "hour day and no wages at all for mc, 30 I'll vote for the lady." "If we get her in it'll be one drop in the backet, anyway." Such "were their homely remarka. "If I'm old enough to have four children, I'm old enough t» have one vote," said another, reminding us that the suffrage in England is still not equal. Probably Mrs. Wintringham will right this and other matters.